English

English at Buglawton Primary School is taught discretely in English lessons, guided reading, phonics and spelling lessons. English skills are also further developed within the wider curriculum. Through being taught to write and speak fluently, pupils learn to communicate their ideas and emotions to others; through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development hence through our reading scheme and key texts, rich vocabulary is introduced. 

Speaking and Listening

Throughout the school opportunities to develop pupil’s spoken language in a range of contexts underpins the development of reading and writing. Pupils are encouraged to speak clearly, confidently and with expression in order to communicate their ideas and feelings.       

Pupils develop their ability to explain their understanding of books and other reading, and to prepare their ideas before they write. They are encouraged to discuss their ideas in order to make sense of their learning.

The importance of early reading, our approach to teaching phonics

At Buglawton, phonics is taught through the systematic acquisition of sounds using the synthetic phonics programme FFT Success for All Phonics.

FFT Success for All Phonics programme is a complete Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme validated by the DfE. Success for All Phonics provides 68 fully decodable reading books (Shared Readers), daily phonics and reading lesson plans, assessment tools, picture cards, mnemonics for letter formation and all other teaching resources needed to support the effective teaching of phonics from EYFS to the end of Year 1. 

The programme is designed for daily use from the beginning of Preschool, enabling children to make a smooth transition from the EYFS to Key Stage 1. The daily lesson plans cover all the main Grapheme–Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) and Common Exception Words (CEWs) to provide children with the phonic knowledge and skills required for success in the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check.

In Year 2, children use Spelling with the Jungle Club's online platform to access engaging daily spelling lessons. Via our 'Routes to Reading', children in Year 2 continue their reading journey from Year 1 by developing reading fluency, comprehension and vocabulary, via a wide range of specially written, engaging texts.

The 'Phonics Screening Check' is taken individually by all children in Year 1 and is designed to give feedback to teachers and parents on how each child is progressing in Phonics. Pupils are asked to read 20 real words and 20 pseudo words, known to the children as 'alien words', in order to ensure children are decoding the words instead of memorising or guessing. ‘Alien words’ are introduced to children in Reception.

During early reading children should become confident readers, having the ability to:

  • decode a word
  • comprehend the meaning of each word they read

Both of these are needed in order to make sufficient progress in reading. 

All children have explicit phonics lessons throughout their first four years at school, starting from Preschool in order to ensure they have enough time to become secure with their decoding skills. Our reading scheme supports phonics teaching. Books are sent home which corresponds to the sound/level that is currently being learned.

Comprehension

Comprehension skills are developed in individual (EY) and guided (KS1 and KS2) reading sessions through pupils’ experience of high-quality discussion with the teacher, as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems and non-fiction within English lessons. Within guided reading and English, children read widely a range of fiction and non-fiction texts to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum.

For help on how to support your children with reading at home, please speak to your child's class teacher.

Reading Scheme

At Buglawton, we have introduced our own Buglawton Reading Scheme which incorporates different book banded quality texts throughout the school.  Our pupils are regularly listened to and assessed to ensure that their book choice is at the correct reading age for the child.

Writing

Writing is taught in the same way in all classes. A process is followed, which we believe allows children to grasp a firm understanding of the genre before attempting to write. The writing process is taught as follows:

Text Immersion (looking at and understanding features of a particular genre)

Analysis (of the type of focus text)

Grammar and Punctuation (specifically needed in order to write in a particular style)

Talk about writing (an opportunity to verbalise ideas)

Planning (an opportunity to plan how the writing will look)

Draft (a first go at writing their piece)

Edit (improving their writing)

Staff support children through each of the writing stages in order to maximise the finished product.

Writing is carefully structured across school to ensure a progressive and engaging learning process. See the coverage of the school below.

In response to parent/carer feedback, we have also put together a Supporting Writing at home document, so parents/carers are aware of what is expected from their child's writing for the year group that they are in. Please see this document below.

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